The Devil Can Quote Scripture

Sermon for SMHP, Year C, Lent I, March 10, 2019

Luke 4:1-13

          Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over, he was famished.

          ³The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”

          ⁴Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”

          ⁵Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶And the devil said to him, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. ⁷If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.”

          ⁸Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only God.’”

          ⁹Then the devil took him to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, ¹⁰for it is written, ‘God will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ ¹¹and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”        ¹²Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ¹³When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time.

          There is a modern-day equivalent to this story.  It usually comes via email, from someplace like Nigeria.

          “My benefactor desires the pleasure of sharing with you a large sum cash.  Please contact immediately so that we may change your life with much money.”

          And then there are some instructions, the long and short of which are that if you will just send either a small sum cash or simply your banking info, you will soon be rich beyond your dreams.

         

          The devil never comes empty-handed.  The devil prefers to tempt rather than coerce.  And let me say here, in case you haven’t heard me say it before, that when I say “the devil,” I mean the forces of sin and evil which defy God and draw us away from goodness.  Not a guy in a red suit with a pointy tail.  We humans like personification, so we will follow the example of the gospels in calling those forces “the devil.”

          The devil is crafty.

          The devil comes with something he thinks you might want.  In Jesus’ case, it was bread—pretty tempting if you haven’t eaten for forty days.  And then temporal power and the ability to answer the burning ancient question, “If everyone else jumped off a building, would you?”

          In our cases, the devil might also come with food.  Or drink.  Or meth.  Or various forms of human pleasure.  Or money, or new toys, or who knows what sorts of stuff we find tempting.

          Oh.  The devil, that’s who.

          The devil is crafty.  The devil comes looking like a friend.  “Hey, we’re all going out and we thought we’d get an eight ball first.  It’s gonna be awesome!  You in?”

          Sometimes the devil looks like a fine upstanding citizen.  As our lesson shows us, and Shakespeare reminds us, the devil can quote scripture.  Remember that, in Merchant of Venice?  Act One, Scene Three:  “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.  An evil soul producing holy witness.”

          The devil quoted our appointed Psalm to try to entice Jesus to throw himself down.

          There is certainly no shortage of evil dressed up in fancy suits and quoting scripture these days, is there? 

          The devil is crafty.

          The devil often catches us when we are vulnerable, like Jesus is in our lesson.  Forty days in the desert without food.  Yeah, isn’t that about when the devil starts to work on all of us.  Those moments when our reserves are low, when it’s easy to get us to bite at temptation…

          And the devil will find those moments.  The question isn’t if we will be tempted by the devil—whatever devil tries to worm his way under our defenses.  It’s not if the devil will find us, but when.  And how.

          And then the question for us, as disciples of Jesus Christ, is who we will be when it happens.  Will we buckle under the pressure, or will we stand firm?

          And will we, can we testify to the power and glory of our God in the midst of the temptation?  In the midst of the adversity?

          The devil threw all that stuff at Jesus, and he just kept coming back with God’s glory.

          “Hey Jesus, I will give you authority over the whole world.”

          “Worship the Lord your God.  And serve only God.”

          “Hey Jesus, throw yourself off this thing and see if God will catch you.”

          “Do not put God to the test, Devil.”

          Of course, the greatest testimony is the ability to look the devil up in his face and say “not today, Devil.”  Nothing testifies to the power of our God, to the commitment we feel to Jesus Christ, like saying “Not today” to the devil. 

          “Not today” to hate, to intolerance, to the temptations that swirl around us.

          “Not today” to the temptation to strike back when you’ve been hurt, or suffered a loss.

          The way we handle adversity may just be the best witness we have.  People expect us to profess Christ in the midst of the good times.  But are we still professing Christ when we’re hungry and cold?  When we’re under attack just for being who we are?  When our addiction becomes the wolf at our door?

          When we can witness to Jesus at those times, people notice.  They notice what it says about us…but they also notice what it says about God.  About Christ.  That our faith is not just for show, but is providing a true foundation for our lives.

          Remember the shooting in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania back in 2006?  A man barricaded himself inside the schoolhouse with the children of that tiny Amish village.  He let the boys go, but when the state troopers arrived, he shot the ten little girls, killing five of them.  The irony was crushing.  A community dedicated to a simple, peaceful life, changed forever by unspeakable violence.

          Within hours of the shooting, the community announced that it had forgiven the shooter.  Amish neighbors comforted the shooter’s family, with one Amish man holding the father of the shooter for nearly an hour as he sobbed.  They weren’t ignoring what had happened.  The events of that day, which they call “The Happening,” haunt the community to this day.  But releasing grudges is a central tenet of the Old Amish community, one which they revealed to the world in the most painful moment in their lives.  Their faith and commitment to Jesus Christ became a beacon of light so strong that the story of Nickel Mines continues to reverberate in a nation in which school shootings are becoming ever more commonplace.

          That level of witness in the midst of great tragedy may be more than any of us can manage.  But we are all called to profess Christ in great times and when we’re facing adversity. 

          Easy to say, right?  Those Amish folks spent their whole lives training to be models of forgiveness. 

          Well, we can’t go back, but I have a couple of suggestions for us as we go forward.  Let’s call them “Tools for Temptation.”  Ways to be ready to witness to our faith in Christ when the devil is tempting us to go a different way.

Tool #1:  Know your story.  All of you have overcome temptation before, have stood with God against the lure of sin and evil.  Remember what you did then, and you will ward off the devil now.

And Tool #2:  Know God’s story.  The people of Nickel Mines had a faith story to draw from in their time of great adversity, when the temptation to vengeance was real.  They knew the story of a God who has forgiven every horrifying thing human beings have done. 

          Those tools overlap, don’t they?  God’s story is our story and we are part of God’s story.  What is important is being ready, as Jesus was ready in the desert, to remember the story of God’s faith in us, so that we can reflect back to the devil, and to the watching world, our faith in God. 

          Temptation will come for us all.  What story will we tell when it comes?